Elaine Bird, the current Librarian of the Signet Library, describes the history and current activities of this library which forms part of one of the world's oldest legal professional bodies

In this article Loyita Worley describes the relationships between the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) and its fellow organisations around the world. She looks at the way that BIALL has promoted law librarianship internationally and mentions some of the activities of the Association including its recent project work in Sierra Leone, as well as noting a few reminiscences along the way.

This paper is based on a presentation of the same title given by Jane Bradbury, Head of Knowledge and Information at the law firm Slaughter and May, at the inaugural seminar of the BIALL Knowledge Management Group on 9th May 2016. The article has been compiled by the other two authors, Jon Beaumont and Tim Barlow, and so not all of the opinions expressed are attributable to Jane. The authors are also indebted to Anne Ashdown, of recruitment firm tfpl, who presented at the same seminar on the subject of recruitment for legal knowledge management (KM) roles and whose observations are also incorporated in the article. The paper considers the increasing impact of KM on the work of library and information professionals in law firms. It discusses the related role of professional support lawyers (PSLs), the knowledge “hot topics” which are driving evolution of the profession, the transferability of information skills, and opportunities for development and career progression beyond the traditional boundaries of library and information management.

In this article Pattie Punch reflects on IALL's 34th Annual Course on International Law and Legal Information which was held at Statsbibliothek, Berlin from 20th to 24th September, 2015. The course was entitled ‘Within and in Between: German Legal Tradition in Times of Internationalization and Beyond’ and the work and content of the presentations made her consider what she values about the education of law librarians in the 21st Century. The course raised many questions in relation to a resilient education for law librarians. Since this course, the Brexit referendum in the UK has taken place and the author offers her thoughts about this change of direction and what it might mean for the profession.

Is Google a substitute for using known, authoritative websites for cases, legislation and other official information? Ian Hunter writes about the test searches that he carried out on Google and discusses the results he noted. In this exercise, consideration is given to whether the websites retrieved are authoritative and also attention is paid to Google's ranking of results.

This paper, by Richard Collier, reviews the dominant methodological and theoretical approaches that have shaped socio-legal scholarship on masculinities and law to date. It presents a flavour of contemporary work in the field and, looking specifically to the concerns of the ALS/British Library/SLSA socio-legal training day on sources and methods in Law, Gender and Sexuality, considers selected issues around methods and sources involved in analysing masculinities and law. The paper suggests work in this area has drawn on a diverse range of archives and content and that there is considerable variation in how legal scholarship has sought to approach the topic of masculinity.

Free access to public legal information for the general public and professionals promotes justice and the rule of law. Presenters at the 2015 Law via the Internet conference discussed projects using the power of technology combined with expert human input to make information accessible, and to extract new information from large document collections. Although the scale is different, there are similarities in the ways in which indexers and informaticians explore meaning, develop standards and consider user needs to make information widely accessible. Glenda Browne reports on the conference.*

Diane Gwynne-Smith writes about the project, which she managed, to create the most comprehensive and freely available online database of materials on social care. It can be found at: www.scie-socialcareonline.org.uk

James Richard Crawford was born in Adelaide in November 1948, where he went to school and eventually graduated from Adelaide University with an LLB and a BA in 1971. His political views were coloured by his country's involvement in the Vietnam War, and these were reflected in his vision of international law, which he researched under Ian Brownlie for his LLD at Oxford (1972–73). The result was his seminal text The Creation of States in International Law. After returning to Australia, James Crawford spent the next 18 years pursuing a career in academia and government legal service, culminating in his occupying the Challis chair at Sydney in 1986. Further recognition of his standing in international law came when Cambridge appointed him to the Whewell Chair in 1992, and the Directorship of the Lauterpacht Centre 1997–2003 and 2006–2009. After 23 years in Cambridge, Professor Crawford was elected to the bench of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2015, where, in May 2018, Lesley Dingle recorded nearly 4 hours of conversation with him in his chambers at the Peace Palace. The audio and transcript records of these interviews have been presented in the Eminent Scholars Archive, along with a narrative biography. During his parallel careers, academic and juristic, James Crawford wrote extensively on international law. His works reveal a distinctive vision of the law's legacy and future prospects. In the present article, Lesley Dingle expands on some of the perspectives that underpin this Crawfordian vision of international law, inter alia: historical contingency, human enhancement, the legal polymath, personal priorities, and constraints on ICJ judges.

This article, written by Katherine Read, gives an introduction to printed and electronic German legal resources that are collected by the Library of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and including those that are accessible through the web. Particular attention is given to English language sources where they are available to library users.

Disability discrimination law is a fast evolving area of the law in England and Wales. This article sets out the basic concepts of what constitutes a “disability”, what constitutes “discrimination” and some of the factors that tribunals, employees and employers should consider in a disability discrimination dispute.

In this article, where Liz Murray, Information Resources Manager at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) in London, interviews Claudia Holland, Head of the Library of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, the strategic direction of the new Head Librarian is explored. The strengths of this major international, comparative private law library are considered and the balance between providing electronic access to law resources while still maintaining an excellent legal print collection is examined. The importance of networks and collaboration is also highlighted.

BIALL hosted a winter regional meeting at the Signet Library in Edinburgh in December.This event gave members who are not able to attend the annual study conference June an opportunity to get together and discuss current professional issues. Local librarians who are not BIALL members were also invited to attend, and there was a good turnout from the Scottish and North of England law librarians groups. The Signet Library, a private subscription library for members of the Society of Writers to the Signet in Scotland, provided a wonderful setting for the talks, discussion sessions and the Friday evening dinner: many us envied Audrey Walker and her team coming to work each day in such elegant surroundings.

Looking back to 1999, there were a number of search engines which performed equally well. I recommended defining the search strategy very carefully, using Boolean logic and field search techniques, and always running the search in more than one search engine. Numerous articles and Web columns comparing the performance of different search engines came to different conclusions on the ‘best’ search engines. Over the last year, however, all the speakers at conferences and seminars I have attended have recommended Google as their preferred tool for locating all kinds of information on the Web. I confess that I have now abandoned most of my carefully worked out search strategies and comparison tests, and use Google for most of my own Web searches.

I had always heard that BIALL delegates to the CALL conference were warmly welcomed, and this year proved to be no exception. From the moment I arrived in Canada, I was greeted like an old friend, reflecting the close co-operation between our two Associations over the years. The size of the conference and structure of the programme make it very easy for BIALL delegates to participate, and the facilities in the London Convention Centre were excellent, making this a very enjoyable trip.

The MDP environment in which I work is the professional services firm of Andersen. I am the manager of the combined research service for Andersen's UK Tax practice and the Andersen Legal law firms in the UK. Andersen Legal in the UK is the firm of Garretts in England and Dundas & Wilson in Scotland. Andersen Legal practices share knowledge, resources and technology to offer a broad range of legal services to clients around the world.

Since the set-up of the Scottish Parliament, brought into being by the Scotland Act 1998, there are a number of areas of “legislative competence” within which the devolved Parliament has had the remit to legislate. This has resulted in the publication of a whole new series of statutes, statutory instruments and official publications which has made the sourcing of Scottish material more complex than previously.

This article by Rebecca O'Rourke, Commissioning Editor, Humanities and Social Sciences Journals, Cambridge University Press discusses the results of the recent survey carried out by CUP on our behalf to see whether LIM is still relevant to our readers.

This article explores how and why LawCare came into being. LawCare is the only charity dedicated to promoting and supporting good mental health and wellbeing across the legal community in the UK. The charity started in 1997 to help solicitors with alcohol problems, but has developed over the years and now supports all legal professionals in the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man with any mental health and wellbeing issues. This article by Mary Jackson is based on a presentation she gave at the BIALL Online Annual Conference held in June 2021.